Articles for tag: Orphans

An Interview with Brian Mavis

Are there orphans in America? Yes, indeed, according to Brian Mavis, president of America”s Kids Belong. Mavis discussed the foster care crisis in the U.S. with Editor Mark A. Taylor at the 2016 NACC in Anaheim. See this exclusive interview here.

Why Do We Love Superheroes So Much?

By Joe Boyd Summer means many things. Long days. Beach vacations. Baseball games and family reunions, neighborhood block parties and community fireworks””traditions that make summer great year after year. And, of course, the most consistent summer theme of all: the blockbuster superhero movie. 2016 continues the trend. Just look at the lineup: Batman v Superman, Captain America: Civil War, X-Men Apocalypse, Suicide Squad, and more. It begs the question. Why do we love superhero movies so much? I mean, we clearly do. Year after year, Hollywood spends millions of dollars making these films, and we respond by giving them billions

JUST ONE: Swish!

TRUE STORIES OF WORLD CHANGERS WHO STARTED ALONE: This month we share stories of individual Christians who couldn”t wait for others to tell them when to help the hurting and share the gospel. Their clear vision of a pressing need pushed them to do what they could as soon as they could. HOOPS OF HOPE / www.hoopsofhope.org By Doug Priest Austin Gutwein was just 9 years old in 2004 when he saw a DVD clip about a starving girl named Maggie who lived in Africa with her aged grandmother. Maggie”s parents had died of AIDS. For weeks, Austin could not get

Changing Who Waits

“Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world” (James 1:27, English Standard Version). By Chris Barras I”ve read James 1:27 many times, and I”ve taught it on it a few occasions. I”ve always found it a difficult text to apply. James says we should care for widows and orphans, but in a young church like the one I serve, I just don”t know any widows. I”m not sure I know any orphans, either. And I don”t think I”m the only

The Orphan Care Movement Gets Deep and Wide

By Brian Mavis In 2004, 39 people gathered in Little Rock, Arkansas, for the first Christian Alliance for Orphans Summit. This year more than 2,500 people drove and flew from 49 states (what”s up, Vermont?) and more than 20 countries to Brentwood, Tennessee, to attend the annual summit. In just nine years, the orphan care ministry has widened, deepened, and become a legitimate movement.   Getting Wider The foster/adoption/orphan problem is huge and complex; there are more than 400,000 children in the U.S. foster care system. Of those, adoption is an available option for 120,000. Every year about 40,000 foster

Caring for America”s Orphans

By Brian Mavis It began for my wife and me with a simple nighttime prayer with our young daughters: “God, take care of the orphans.” We always imagined kids in Africa when we prayed that, and eventually we sponsored a couple of kids from Kenya. But that prayer kept doing its work on us, and it led to an obvious question for us: “Are there orphans in America?”   Orphans in America? Surely there were some, a child here or there who had lost her parents. But if God wanted to use us to help answer that prayer and to

Born of the Heart

The 747 lumbered toward the runway at New York”s John F. Kennedy Airport. The preceding plane did not exit the runway quickly enough, however, and the Air India flight had to “go around,” as the air traffic controllers say. We waited another 20 minutes to see our daughter. Jael Neisha arrived at 2½ months of age. She weighed 5 pounds when she was born in Calcutta. But for no discernible reason she began to waste away in the Indian orphanage. When Jael finally emerged from the U.S. Customs arrival gate, her wrinkled face was covered with sweat. She was quite

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